Vegan-for-a-month, week 1 complete

As part of my 101 in 1001, I'm eating vegan for a month to see, well, to see whatever. Do I feel better, worse, thinner, tired, energetic?

Well, so far, it hasn't been too hard. I think that it's because I've been eating vegetarian for almost a year now, so I was already accustomed to searching special recipes and making substitutions. Still, it has been an adjustment.

For example, there was a big dinner at work last night for the sales meetings. There was almost nothing that I could choose because even the veggies had been grilled or sauteed with olive oil and a bit of butter, and all of the salads had some cheese sprinkled on them. But, that's OK. I just had to ask a lot of questions and be careful.

I'm not trying to be difficult for anyone, so I'm not making a big deal about it (although I think Tammy, in the cafeteria, would disagree with me.)

There have been a couple of slip-ups, completely unintentional, of course. Example, I'm used to relying on Cream of Mushroom soup to add to things here and there. It's one of the few soups in the pantry that has no meat or meat broth added to it. Well, I needed an addition to some scalloped potatoes that I made, so I just slopped a couple of spoonfuls of the soup in before I realized what I was doing. Um, duh - CREAM of anything = milk.

I'm not going to hold little incidents like that against myself and my goal of a month. The point is to eat consciously, and I'm certainly doing that.

Do I feel differently? Maybe. If I had gone vegan directly from a meat diet, I would be struggling.

One thing that I know for sure is that I lost five pounds in the first six days!